Hiding Despair
by DawningStar
Summary: A few thousand years after the Dragon Campaign, Rose makes her regular report to Ulara. For a brief moment afterward, Charle's usual cheerfulness deserts her...this time, Miata sees it. Complete.


Hiding Despair   
by DawningStar

Some days, Caron wondered whether the Dragon Campaign had been only a dream. 

The thought was ridiculous whenever she caught hold of it to look more closely, but it persisted nevertheless. Fighting? Swords? Magic used in battle? It was hard, now, to remember any of it...hard to remember anything but the endless routine she followed. 

Each morning, she rose from a restless night's sleep to spend hours working on the many teleportation platforms around the city, most of which rarely found use. She passed others, at work with their own tasks or simply lingering, but didn't often speak. What was the use? There was, after all, very little new to say. 

Some days she remembered to eat before it grew dark again. Some days she didn't. It never seemed to matter. She rarely had much appetite anyway. 

Today, her endless cycle had brought her to the outside teleporter. The invisibility shield hiding Ulara was no real barrier for Caron, since Charle's spell recognized her magic as a part of its own, and she knew where the city was without the need for sight anyway. 

As usual, the desert winds had piled a drift of pale sand on it, and Caron staggered as she landed askew, barely catching herself in time to avoid a bruising tumble to the surrounding rocks. With a sigh, she knelt in the dirt, careless of her long white gown--washing it would at least briefly give her something else to do--and began to brush away the sand in preparation for the deeper work, the repetitive motion at least temporarily removing the need for thought. 

She had nearly finished the task when the sense of a familiar mind approaching from above made her scramble to her feet again, squinting against the harsh desert sun to find the dark speck growing rapidly clearer. Here, then, was the one sure and certain reminder of what had happened--what was still happening, outside. "Welcome back!" she called in excitement, waving. 

Sheathed in a dark flame, the figure landed only a few feet away. Barely nodding to Caron, Rose breathed a long sigh as the armor of her Dragoon form faded away. 

"You flew in this time," Caron observed, determined to make some kind of conversation. "You don't do that often." She was fairly certain that the Human had been away somewhat longer than necessary, too, but time was hard to judge when there were no seasons or any recognizable change save for the Moon's glow every one hundred and eight years. Anyway, it was hardly new. Once Rose had chosen to stay away from Ulara for the entire span between Moon Children. 

Rose made a wordless noise in response and stepped toward the teleporter Caron had just dusted off, careless that she was tracking more sand onto the sensitive surface. Caron eyed that in disfavor, but abandoned her task for the moment and joined her. 

The short trip was smoother, Caron noted, though not as good as it might be. Definitely she'd have to get back to the outside device later. But first--Rose's homecomings were the only thing out of the routine that ever happened, and no two had ever been the same. She hurried along beside the Darkness Dragoon, hoping that no one would think to send her away. 

"Caron, go back to whatever you were doing," Rose said flatly just then, not bothering to look over. 

She shouldn't have felt as though she had to obey, Caron told herself, not for the first time. In years--if she remembered right--she was actually somewhat older than Rose...not that it mattered particularly, when both were well over two thousand years old now. But something about the Human, whether her greater experience outside Ulara or the coldness that had come on her over the centuries of tragedy, always made Caron feel remarkably like a child caught in some misbehavior. "Do I have to?" she asked, and instantly regretted it; the question only emphasized that feeling. 

Rose did look at her then, an icy glare from midnight eyes that had somehow lost all warmth in the years since they had first met. "Yes, Caron," she confirmed, tone dry. "You have to." 

Suppressing a sudden mischievous urge to stick out her tongue, Caron added, "I'll see you later then," and turned about, suppressing a sigh. What she really wanted to do was tail Rose through Ulara and watch everybody else's reactions, but evidently that was not to be. 

Well. At least Rose was _back_. Maybe they would have some time to talk later. Rose always had something new to talk about, unlike everyone else in the long-preserved city. 

Watching the Wingly woman walk back toward her teleporters, shoulders slumped in obvious disappointment, Rose felt a faint twinge of amusement for the first time in a long while. No trace of it showed on her face, of course. But Caron's transparent efforts to see what was going on nearly succeeded in lessening the pain of the too-fresh memory... 

Nearly. At the thought, Rose's eyes hardened again into the emotionless barrier she had made of them--not quite a perfect barrier, yet. But they would be. She had time. Time was one thing she had far, far too much of...time, and death. 

Charle Frahma, leader of the Spring Breath City, was carefully feeding the snapping flowers on one of the nearby circular platforms. This was where Rose found her most often, tending the desert-grown plants which did much to purify the magically created water that sustained Ulara. Beside her, holding a pail of what looked like fertilizer, was a younger woman named Miata. 

Both looked up and set aside their task as she approached. "Why, Rosie, dear!" Charle called over the intervening distance. "Welcome home!" 

Rose silently gritted her teeth at the nickname, but didn't object. It only seemed to encourage the eternally childlike woman, who never tired of simple tasks and called nearly everyone by endearments. Often Rose had thought that it wasn't quite fitting for the most powerful Wingly alive and the person who held Ulara together to behave so--but how could one tell Charle that? She would only have laughed. "I'm just here to report," she replied. "Michael doesn't want to come back yet, so I have to stay with him." 

Charle nodded. "Do you want to come to my house, then? It's more private there." 

A quick look around convinced Rose of the wisdom of this. Already three or four Winglies were nearby, trying hard to look as though they were fully involved in something else but not succeeding very well. She nodded, and followed Charle toward the large structure that served as her own home as well, when she stayed in Ulara. 

None of the eavesdroppers followed them there, though when Rose glanced back she caught the disappointed looks on their faces for just a moment before they moved off to whatever their real tasks were. "I wish they wouldn't do that," she muttered under her breath as the anti-listening spells about Charle's home enclosed them. 

"They really do try to be discreet," Miata said, her tone faintly amused--she had walked the distance with them. "They know you don't like to be watched. But you have to understand, Rose, you're the only one in Ulara we can't predict. And really, what else is there to do?" 

Rose snorted. "Entertainment for a lot of bored Winglies. Now that is _not_ something I ever pictured myself doing." 

"Well, we all must do what we can," Miata told her in a poor imitation of a comforting tone--the laughter lurking underneath rather spoiled the effect. "I suppose you want me to run off, too," she added, correctly interpreting the flat stare the Human shot her. "I'll just go finish up with the plants, Charle." 

"Thank you, Miata, dear," Charle nodded. "Now then, Rosie...you did find the child before...?" 

"It was an isolated farmstead," Rose reported tonelessly. "The infant was barely a day old when Michael and I reached it. There was only the family, this time, and a midwife who was still there, fortunately. Minimal exposure..." 

Reaching the entrance of the house, Miata paused and looked back. At her dismissal, Charle's sophisticated spells had come into effect, deadening all sound from Rose's grim account--even yet, Charle's long, secret battle within the Wingly Empire kept her paranoid, though she hid it well. But nothing kept Miata from taking her own assessment of this century's battle. 

The Human leaned against the wall of the room, a deceptively casual position that had the effect of placing her unguarded back safely away from any assault. Her posture, though not obviously any sort of battle position, was nonetheless wary, relaxed yet ready to spring into motion at an instant's alarm. That much had been present before, a habit that Rose perhaps had ceased even to notice. 

It was in her eyes that the changes had come, like a dull, emotionless wall slowly falling into place. Once, the deep indigo color had lit with warmth with the Darkness Dragoon's smile, sparkled when she laughed, and both had come often. But the sparkle had gone out with the death of Zieg, Rose's fiancé and dearly beloved; and the smiles and laughter, already devoid of any real happiness, had ceased altogether when the velvet choker first made her a part of Ulara's long preservation. And with each life that fell to her sword in the long cycles since, that wall grew harder, and her gaze colder. It was the same this time as every other, the ice thickening a little more. 

_They call her the Black Monster. She has begun to think it of herself._

Unable to watch longer without being seen, Miata slowly returned to the flowerbeds. The familiar motions did little to distract her. 

Miata had long since lost the ability to judge the passage of time, and it might have been minutes later or hours that Rose strode by her again, though the setting sun's long shadows suggested it was probably closer to the latter. "Leaving so soon?" she called. 

Rose didn't look back. "Michael is expecting me. We'll be back when the time comes." 

"Well, be careful out there, all right?" 

The Dragoon's swift steps had carried her into the encroaching dusk. A ghost of her voice floated back on the wind: "Miata, there is very little left in the world that could harm me..." 

Helplessly, Miata stared after the Human as the sun continued its blood-red descent, until well after the green glow of the teleporter in the distance told her that Rose had gone. The sky faded from blue, through deepest indigo, to velvet black, and the stars appeared one by one, and still she did not move. 

"I know what you're thinking," a subdued voice came from beside her, and Miata turned in surprise to find Charle following her gaze with an uncharacteristically somber expression. "I've thought it myself. Many times, in the past two thousand years." 

"I wish," Miata started, her voice sounding very small in her own ears, "I wish there had been some other way." 

Charle reached out to clench a hand on the waist-high stone parapet that ran about the raised walkway. "There should have been," she whispered. 

Miata pulled her eyes away from the distant horizon and peered worriedly at her friend. This was a deeper melancholy than any she had seen before, though she was one of the few who knew that Charle's normal cheerful façade was there mostly for the purpose of keeping up everyone else's spirits, not truly a reflection of her own feelings. 

But she was shocked to see the starlit glitter of tears in the older Wingly's ruby eyes. Never before had Charle allowed anyone to see her weep. Never while she laid plans to undermine and kill her baby brother and only family, not when word came that Syuveil, Jade Dragoon and a quiet-natured scholar, and the Blue Sea Dragoon Damia, half-mermaid and youngest of the seven, had both died in battle. Not when the victory at Kadessa left Rose the only survivor of the Dragoons; not when most of Charle's Ulara-trained Wingly allies died as well, in that final battle to defeat her brother Melbu Frahma. Each time, she had borne up, comforted those who counted on her, and allowed herself tears only in private--if at all. 

_Is this so very much worse than all the deaths?_ Miata wondered, and the answer came on the heels of the question: _yes, this is worse. They died nobly, for a good cause. And now--no one could argue against her cause, but there is nothing noble about what we ask of Rose._

"I should have found some other way," Charle repeated, and Miata, averting her gaze from the unsettling sight of the other's tears, found herself seeing instead Charle's hands, clenched white-knuckled on the stone wall. "Any other way!" Her voice broke and she turned away, but Miata heard her murmur, "I was no friend, to ask this of her." 

"Charle," Miata began, trying again to console a sorrow she knew to be deeper than anything she herself could imagine, "there wasn't any other choice...we couldn't possibly trap it again...and you told me, then, that you couldn't ask it of any of us, because of what had happened to your brother..." 

_Yes._ The older woman looked up, her eyes seizing onto Miata's with an uncharacteristic fierceness, and Miata froze in shock at realizing that the last word hadn't been _spoken_ at all--_Melbu...I couldn't risk...that. Not again..._

And abruptly Miata found herself unable to look away, as the powerful telepath's inner turmoil flooded her own meager mental defenses, locking her into the ocean of guilt and grief Charle had kept hidden behind her smiles and jokes. 

_He was my baby brother and I raised him and I wanted him dead and I loved him and I hated him and I love him even now--I wish he was alive and I wish he'd never been born and I planned his death but didn't have the courage to carry it out myself, and Mayfil take me but I wish he had never, never learned about the Divine Tree's last fruit, perhaps we could have defeated it together but he couldn't defeat power's call, when he tapped that Sphere I helped him create--and how I wish I never had!--he was no longer the boy I raised, he was the Emperor then, and I knew what he wanted, he wanted to become the God of Destruction himself, and how could I risk letting another Wingly touch that power? _

_But Rose, Rose, first you lost your beloved to my failure, if I had only done what I should have all along and killed my brother, but I loved him still too much for that, though I knew he was already dead; and now you have lost any hope of peace to my incapability, I could not keep the Crystal Sphere from breaking, Melbu knew my plans too soon and it shattered when he died, I could not trap the soul of the Moon again, and now you pay the price to my weakness, I could not do it myself for fear that I would be tempted just as my brother was, I didn't dare, again I am using others to finish what I should have done long ago, I cannot ask your forgiveness but how I wish you could give it me... _

...and then Charle looked away, slamming battered shields back into place and freeing Miata. "I am sorry," she whispered. "You shouldn't have seen that." 

Miata blinked, gasped, and found that she was trembling violently. "Charle," she said hoarsely, "you...that...and I never knew..." 

"I never meant any of you to. You have enough to worry about without my burdens on top of it." She shook her head, staring into the starlit, cloudless sky as though seeking the Dragoon's form within it. "It would be best if you forgot what I...let slip." 

For one long moment, Miata was tempted. It had been so much easier, thinking of Charle Frahma as untouched by anything, perpetually cheery and all-wise and supportive and without need for support herself...but that was terribly unfair to the woman who had led them all through the long war and the empty years since. Charle had helped Miata deal with her own grief and despair, and most of the other Winglies in Ulara as well. 

_I owe her enough to try, at least,_ Miata thought, and laid a hand on Charle's, still gripping the stone wall. "No, Charle. I won't forget. You shouldn't have to bear it alone." 

A twisted, bitter echo of Charle's normal musical laugh shivered in the cooling air. "It's only fair that I do, isn't it? _She_ does..." 

"Rose has Michael to support her, and you," Miata reminded. Bracing her courage against another mental assault, she sought the older Wingly's haunted gaze. "And you have supported all of us. If you won't tell anyone else, at least let me help you." 

Charle's peculiarly vulnerable ruby eyes searched hers, and for an instant Miata thought her friend would speak. But then she turned away once more, presenting Miata with a back held straight with ancient pride, and when the words came, they held only the quiet control that Charle always showed, none of the turbulent thoughts Miata had inadvertently sensed. "If you want to help me, Miata...keep hoping. I can go on as long as someone has hope, even if I have lost my own..." 

And before Miata could say anything else, she had teleported away, leaving a brief, glittering rainbow of light to shatter in the tears filling Miata's sight. 

* * *

  
  


Author's Notes: 

I had more of this planned once, concerning Caron, the Gigantos, and possibly a reference to Miata's foster-children from my other pre-game fic, Crystal Shard--but that ending just worked so well I couldn't bear changing it...anyhow. This fic came about mostly because I happened to read about four comments within a day about how Charle's cheerfulness was irritating, and I started wondering whether anyone else saw her as I did, as someone who's gone through very nearly as much as Rose...and then this fic jumped out of nowhere to explain my point of view. 

It's shorter than most of my work, but I'm actually almost proud of it. No poetry--well, there were one or two things I could have stuck in, but I don't like interrupting the story for my poor attempts at verse unless it really seems to fit in. They may eventually end up in a collection of various writings from Ulara and the Dragon Campaign I'm working on, however. I've spent too much time on random poems in the past couple months to let them sit on my computer forever. 

Whether you like it or not, leave me a review, please. This fic has a good chance of being incorporated into the poetry collection I mentioned above, so I'd like to know if there's anything wrong with it. 


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